


lord, lord, don’t you hear me praying

by rcjosta



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, it's a slow burn but also kravitz is incredibly smitten, kravitz has a lot of good friends but he is lonely!!!, there's also a bit of sloane and hurley in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-09 06:24:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10405920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rcjosta/pseuds/rcjosta
Summary: Kravitz died early-ish. He thinks he has come to terms with that.He also thinks he has a crush, and that fact is definitely ruining his life.





	1. je ne regrette rien

Kravitz dies when he is thirty-one.

He is on a train, kitty-corner to an older halfling woman, who sporadically talks to him about her grandchildren. He is on his way to go to his sister’s wedding, near their childhood home in the farmlands. It is snowing outside, great big hunks of snow drifting down past the windows and onto the fields below, gathering in huge piles.

He balances his face on his hand, leaning against the windowsill, looking out into the blizzard outside. Classic music is playing from somewhere on the train, something smooth. Sounds almost like a Fantasy Nina Simone joint. The train straightens, and he can see the high-elf singer, tall and beautiful, her dress bright against her dark skin. The piano player - dwarf, dressed to the nines - plays like there’s been a song in him for a long time. The elf hits a high note, and almost in response, the train jolts. He pays no attention the first time, but it jolts. It jolts. It jolts again.

Kravitz turns his head to look out the window again, and instead of the long fields of snow-covered wheat, he sees the quickly-approaching ground. He gets up as fast as he can, throwing his body in front of the older woman, as the elf singer sings one last, terrible note. And-

Darkness. Cold darkness, like in the basement of the shop he keeps. He sells candles. 

Sold. Dead. He supposes it's good it was so quick. He didn't feel any pain. 

Somehow, light leaks back in and he blinks against it. He sees his body, covered in that velvet-suit he saved up four months on a shop assistant’s salary, cradled by wreckage of the train. He sees the gold scarf his mother bought him, wrapped firm against his neck, covered in blood. His blood?

Oh lord. 

He sees a movement near his body, and turns his spectral form to look at the old woman, who looks unharmed, other than a steadily bleeding cut on her forehead. She crawls over, grabbing his hand and mops up her cheek with her sleeve. Kravitz watches as she turns her head upwards to yell something at the heavens. 

A dark bird - a crow? - settles onto one of the tall, dark trees behind them, watching. He can only see them because of fire from the train, and they are quiet onlookers. He wants to tell them to shoo, but he can’t. He can’t do anything. Another bird joins them, and soon -

Soon, there’s a flock of dark, formless birds in the trees, watching the train wreck burn. Kravitz feels his eyelid twitch as one flies through him, and he wants to scream, but he can’t. He sits down on the snow. It isn’t cold. He cannot feel it underneath him. 

He hears a throat clear behind him, eventually. 

He cranes his neck and quickly scuttles to his feet. A woman, clad in the most ornate dress he’s ever seen, with long trains that unspool like water, stands before him, arms crossed. Her hair - glorious black silk- stumbles past her feet, and her eyes are blood red. They are kind. The birds caw twice, in harmony.

“Mac Kravitz,” she says in a low voice, and Kravitz is terrified.

“W-who are you?” he says, his voice weaker than he wants. He thinks about putting on an accent as a brief distraction, like how he does when he’s nervous at work, but he has a feeling this woman would see right through him.

He looks down. He does look pretty watery.

“One of my charges called me to you. Why are you so special to call me for?” she asks him like he knows. She slowly walks around him, looking him up and down. The birds, as if under a spell, follow her as she moves. 

“I’m not sure, ma’am,” he says, truthfully, like his father always said he should. He tries to adjust his collar, but his hand goes right through himself. He curses quietly and sets his hand down at his side.

“Shopkeeper, conductor-to-be, brother, son. You have skills, Kravitz,” she says from somewhere over his shoulder, not kind or unkind. A statement of fact. 

“I practice every day, for hours on end,” he says, not thinking about it. It’s true. “I don’t think I could stop if I wanted to. I love it too much.”

She makes a noise in her throat, lovely as it is dangerous. 

“You threw your body in front of Esme, and she lives.” She stops with her inspection and stands in front of him, cocking her head to the side as she looks somewhere over Kravitz’s shoulder. He can hear the older woman’s - Esme, he guesses - screams for him still.

“I wanted to soften the blow,” he says, and wonders how that just came out of his mouth. It must’ve been the right thing to say, as she smiles. It’s lovely.

“Of course you did,” she says gently, looking at him with those kind, red eyes. She cocks her head to the side again, eyes studying him.

“Do you know who I am?” 

He shakes his head.

“I am the Raven Queen. I am the controller of death,” she says simply. Kravitz quickly changes his stance on the birds in the trees.

“Are you here to tell me I’m dead, because, frankly, I’m quite sure about that,” he says quickly, without thinking, and clams up. _Damn it._

She doesn’t kill him (more) immediately, but laughs instead. The snow falls around them, through them. They barely exist on this plane anymore. 

“How would you like to work with me, Mac Kravitz? As a bounty hunter, under my charge,” she asks, her hands folding behind her back. 

Kravitz doesn’t consider saying no. He might not be religious, but Kravitz knows a goddess when he sees one. Despite what his customers at the shop might think, he is not stupid.

“When do you want me to start?” he asks quietly. 

The Raven Queen laughs, and the crows - ravens - caw. She draws a knife from her dress, one ornately carved and studded with rubies, and slashes a hole in reality. She steps through, careful of her dress, and beckons Kravitz in.

“Right now, darling. Right now.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Esme goes twenty years later. 

He takes a personal trip to escort her soul from her bedroom, which is next to a window with a view of the newly built city of Phandalin. She is surrounded by her wife, their children, and her grandchildren. As she comes with him, taking his arm in her smaller one, she points them out by name. There is Todd, and his husband, Richard. That’s Alicia, and her new baby, Camille. Sweetest baby, never fusses. Paul and Cameron, Paul told me he’s proposing soon. Victoria and Eva, and isn’t she beautiful? 

He cries in his office over them when he’s alone. It’s hard in the beginning, seeing them go. So few of them are happy to leave. Soon, with centuries of practice, he becomes practical. He’s good as his job. He is immortal now, as the Raven Queen informs him, so he has time to practice.

But, Esme invites him to tea every week or so, and he goes every time, wearing the same suit from when he died. She compliments him on how handsome he looks every time.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

The very first time Merle Highchurch, Magnus Burnsides,and Taako Taaco die, they are nothing but names. He assumes he’ll be seeing them soon, like all death warrants, but they never show up. Kravitz doesn’t like waiting for people that are due for him. However, sometimes, the system can mess up. Lazarus and all that. He lets it slide, this time. 

Months later, Astral-time, Merle is up to 36 deaths, and is growing. Kravitz makes another check mark in his folder, and watches as the counter ticks to 37 only a few minutes later. Taako has died again, which is quite rare for him, and marks a 4 to a 5. Magnus has held tight at 12, and has for weeks.

Finding them would be hard work, and Kravitz has a long list of people more pressing and dangerous than these guys, but it’s interesting. In this line of work, things don’t stay interesting for long, but this - this is a crossword puzzle mixed with a mismatched game of Telephone. He starts to greet the names in his head, like old friends.

 _Hi Merle, see you haven’t died today, good work,_ he thinks as he walks by the counters, hands full of some other soul that needed taking. Magnus has risen a little bit, up to 17. Kravitz, somewhere deep in his immortal heart, kind of wants to see what they look like. Are they huge warriors? Clerics or bards with immense amounts of healing magic? Wizards that can control time and space? 

Or are they just very, very lucky?

 _Lonely man,_ the Raven Queen admonishes quietly in his ear. He shrugs. He is. 

The bounty on Merle rises to almost incomprehensible levels, and the Raven Queen sends him a note via a sheepish man named Tom. Written in beautiful black ink, it says,

**Find Highchurch. Bounty = 11BGP. Too much to overlook. Find others if possible.**

**TRQ**

He looks. He does. It’s hard, as every time he digs into their pasts, it all comes up muddled. He cannot pin their exact locations down, so he speculates, heads to Raven's Roost two weeks too late. Eventually, part of his new Astral Plane intake procedure is asking new captures if they’ve heard of the trio, and he largely gets nothing, until a dwarf named Gundren Rockseeker dies.

“Those boys… those boys helped me out with a few things. Merle’s a long distant cousin of mine. Why?” 

Kravitz shakes his head, watching as Gundren’s fire-singed skin tries to repair itself in its spectral form. 

“They’ve been on the run from me for a long time, Mr. Rockseeker. You wouldn’t happen to know where they are heading next?”

Gundren looks sheepish, and scuffs his shoe on the Intake Building’s floor. 

“No. We didn’t have… the smoothest departure. Hell, I would ever guess they might show up here next, if what I did was terrible enough.”

Kravitz glances over at the counters, which stay on 57, 19, and 8 respectively, like they have for the last few months. Unlikely survivors.

“Thank you, Gundren. Go ahead to the Astral Plane,” he says distantly, and Gundren fades from sight.

A piece to the endless puzzle. Kravitz chocks it up as a half-victory. An elf named Jenkins admits to have heard of them, while spitting on the ground and muttering “spell slots” when he hears their names. He starts to tell Kravitz about his wrecked garden, but Kravitz shoos him to the Astral Plane, uninterested. 

A gang of people named the Hammerheads come through next, admitting to have heard the name, and with distaste. 

“Taako? Yeah, that fucker who looked a lot like my friend Little Jerry! He was trying to tell me that that Taako was my name! I asked him to guess my name, because I’m sure he would’ve known it, being my friend Little Jerry!” 

Kravitz raises his eyebrow, leaning a hand against his palm, his dreadlocks swishing in the air below his arm. 

“He told you your name was Taako? Then proceeded to kill you?”

Barbara nods emphatically, his eyes wide.

“Yeah! Can you believe it? He didn’t even guess it. It’s a lovely name! I ever named all my children Barbara, after myself, of course,” he digs up a Spectal Wallet somehow, and shows Kravitz the picture of his family. They all look pretty racist, so Kravitz just nods and urges him through the Astral Plane.

Two women come through next, clutching each other’s hands. A halfling woman introduces herself as Hurley, while the other, half-elf mutters, “Sloane.” He asks the requisite questions, and Hurley lights up at the names, which is the first time that’s ever happened.

“Oh, I love those guys! They helped me get Sloane back to normal,” she says, looking at Sloane with love in her eyes. Kravitz’s heart hurts.

“It also killed you, my dear,” Sloane says quietly, and Hurley just pulls her closer. 

“Stop with that,” Hurley admonishes quietly, and turns her gaze back to Kravitz, eyes wide like she’s remembering he’s there. 

“I would trust those guys with my life! And, ha, I guess I did. They’re very good guys, despite the recklessness. Especially Taako,” Hurley says, and Kravitz finds himself intrigued. These were the first expressly good stories he’s heard of them.

“They didn’t kill you?” he asks, a little incredulously. Hurley shakes her head.

“Nah, they tried to save us. Good guys, those three,” she shrugs. She looks back into Sloane’s eyes, and she seems to swoon, just a bit.

“If you excuse us,” Hurley says, still staring back into Sloane’s eyes, and they slowly fizzle out, like static.

 _Good guys._ Kravitz leans back in his Fantasy Staples chair, gazing where they used to be, and tents his fingers together. _Interesting._

Then, one day, on Candlelights, he gets a call through his Stone of Farspeech. Another charge of the Raven Queen whispers to him, “They’re in a laboratory on the moon, with the ghosts of Noelle Recheck and Maureen Miller.”

He knows who they’re talking about. Who else? He leaves immediately, and prepares a golem body in advance.

He knows his heart doesn’t beat anymore, but he can feel something deep within him pounding in anticipation.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

He gets Taako’s Stone of Farspeech attunement. Because of course he does. He’s always been a sucker for dry humour, a crooked smile, and nice legs, even when he was alive. Of course one of the three people he’s been tracking for years has all of those things, and looks at him like he’s worth talking to. 

Beautiful, glorious Taako. He honestly doesn’t know how the others talk to him without blushing, as silly as that sounds.

“I don’t think that’s silly, dear,” Esme says kindly, taking a hit off her cigar. He puts down his hand of Baccarat, and groans.

Kravitz is visiting her for tea, and he explains the whole thing like a gushing wound. Esme listens, occasionally taking hits off her favourite brand of cigar or taking a sip of champagne. She always was the compassionate ear, and this is no exception. 

“You have a crush,” she points out, and Kravitz nods. He’s come to terms with this. He’s even practiced asking Taako out in the mirror, of course it’s a crush.

“What if he doesn’t like me back?” he mutters, fully aware that he’s centuries old and sounds like a child, and Esme, respectfully, doesn’t call him out for it.

“Kravitz, dear, stop it. You are _dreamy,_ ” Esme starts, gesturing to him with her cigar. “You have gorgeous hair, and a wonderful smile, and you wear that suit like you were poured into it.”

“I was,” he mutters, and she chuckles, huge clouds of smoke pushing past her lipsticked mouth. 

“See? Funny too,” she says, and Kravitz looks up at her, and she’s smiling at him. She taps her cigar on her ash tray, and leaves it there as she reaches over to hold his hand between hers.

“I know we are in the weirdest circumstances, lovey. But we must find ways to love and to be loved, even here,” she gestures to their surrounding, an empty table in front of the Goldcliff marina that Kravitz conjured. “You are so lonely, Kravitz, and this boy will be good for you.”

“But what if I’m not good for him? I am the Grim Reaper, Esme,” Kravitz asks quietly, and damn him, the voice of reason in his head.

“Then we’ll call up David from the head office and ask him to take one for the team,” Esme says, squeezing his hands, and Kravitz laughs, caught off guard.

“I think he would like you,” Kravitz says after a while of silence, and Esme nods, grabbing her cigar and taking another puff of it.

“I hope we’ll get to meet one day,” she says, exhaling slowly, curls of smoke covering them both. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

He arrives at his quarters and he doesn’t even have to work up the courage to call Taako, because Taako calls him. Invites him to go to the Chug ’n Squeeze, sounding as nervous as Kravitz feels, even though he tries to hide it under bravado. Kravitz tucks the Stone underneath his chin as he talks, and Taako jokes and flirts and seems enthralled by him, which is terrifying and improbable, but. 

But Taako is. And he’s died nine times, and he’s still alive. 

Kravitz hums _I’ve Got You Under My Skin_ so many times the next day before he realizes it’s pretty ironic, considering he can turn into a Bone Man at will, but he keeps humming it anyway.


	2. a sunday kind of love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kravitz is eternally nervous, and Taako is eternally charming, and also very nervous.

Kravitz is late to their date at the Chug ’n Squeeze.

He’s late because he’s been in the Bureau of Balance bathroom for the last ten minutes, sitting in a stall, trying fruitlessly to steady his breathing. He doesn’t even need to breathe, but there’s something about nerves that makes him want to heave like he just finished a marathon. He listens as people come in and out of the bathroom, chatting about their days, shadows moving underneath the stall door. Someone named Brad says he’s holding an office party later, and the person with him offers to bring a plate of cucumber sandwiches. Normal.

He wipes the sweat off his neck with trembling hands. God, he really hasn’t been around not-imminently-dying people for a while. Kravitz wasn’t the smoothest while he was alive either, but the fact that he can turn into bone at any point now doesn’t help.

It also doesn’t help that he’s trying to impress one of the handsomest men he’s ever seen either. He would be much less nervous without that particular tidbit.

He looks up at the ceiling and sighs, fidgeting with his rings. He thinks about communing to the Raven Queen for guidance, or just cancelling the date, but he can’t. He wouldn’t forgive himself if he did, and he knows Esme wouldn’t either.

He forces himself to stand up and leave the sanctuary of the stall, washing his hands with fancy, eucalyptus soap they keep in the dispensers. He braves a look in the mirror, and he looks… okay. Handsome, even, with his hair down and his spotless white dress shirt neat and wrinkle-free. He rolls up his sleeves to his elbows to try and give it a casual spin, but it doesn’t work as much as he would like. Still “uncle-at-a-funeral”-esque, but it’ll have to do. He checks his teeth, and thanks the Raven Queen the eyeliner he put on earlier is still holding up, and splashes a bit of water on his face to freshen him up. He gives himself one last critical once over, and without losing his nerve, he leaves the bathroom, heading toward the soft violin music of the Chug ’n Squeeze.

Taako’s smile and wave when he finally pushes through the door is so radiant Kravitz’s knees start to give out. He stays standing valiantly.

 _I'm fucked,_ he thinks, waving back sheepishly, and somewhere deep in the cosmos, the Raven Queen smiles.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

It goes well. Better than well. He listens to Taako ramble about an extended bowl metaphor for four minutes and then realizes they’re both into _this, whatever_ this is.

He makes an okay-looking vase that Taako scratches a T into before he can yank it away. He innocently asks Taako for color suggestions for the glaze and there’s two thunks of brightly coloured glaze bottles, one pineapple yellow and one petal pink, on the table in front of him, and he turns to see Taako giving him a thumbs up. He laughs and gets to work. 

He is both smitten and cautious and Taako is nervous and handsy and if Kravitz could feel his heart again, it would’ve been singing long and loud. Even when the Umbra Staff tries to get him, even when it’s awkward and tenuous. It’s there. 

In his office of dark mahogany furniture and deep red walls, the vase, crudely put together as it might look, stands on his desk like the brightest star in the night sky. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

They keep talking, somehow. They talk often. Kravitz does his dark business and Taako calls him when he can to talk about his day. Kravitz volunteers his days too, although it’s usually “did more paperwork,” or “reaped fourteen necromancers from a death cult." 

And sometimes, Taako calls him out of the blue, while Kravitz is doing paperwork to whatever classical music his Stone of Farspeech can spit at him. Apparently, Taako says there’s a path through the Bureau of Balance gardens that is ’just lovely, Kravitz, you should really see it.”

“Is there really?” he says, smiling, fiddling with his fountain pen. Taako makes a noise on his end, and Kravitz can imagine him flopped over his bed, an arm sprawled across his eyes.

“Would _I_ lie to you?” he says with a heavy amount of fake-outrage, and Kravitz chuckles, leaning back in his chair. 

“I seem to remember _someone_ telling Merle his coconut print shorts didn’t make him look like a dad on vacation,” he says, and there’s a scoff over the line.

“What was I supposed to do, break his heart? I’m not _evil,_ ” there’s a rustling as Taako shifts positions. “Is there any room in that busy schedule of yours for some Taako time?”

“For you, darling, of course,” Kravitz says, turning to checking his schedule to see if that’s really true. If it isn’t, well, Taako wouldn’t have to know. 

“Meet me by the entrance in ten? ” Taako purrs, and Kravitz nods, forgetting Taako can’t physically see him. 

“I will see you in ten,” he confirms sheepishly, and the line goes dead. He lets himself have a double fist pump in the air, before -

“Does someone have a hot date on _paperwork day?_ ”

He startles like a cat, and turns quickly to see Julia, fellow emissary of the Raven Queen, standing in the doorway of his office, smirking at him. 

He relaxes. Julia is one of the kinder emissaries, always smiling at him in the hall when he passes. She compliments his suits, and he compliments her choice of patterned blouses. It’s an easy friendship.

She’s also carrying about two metric tons of more paperwork. He groans, as Julia laughs good-naturedly, walking forward to dump it on his desk. He eyes it like it’s about to attack him.

“Who with?” she asks, taking a seat on the edge of his desk.

Kravitz tears his eyes away from the stack of papers. “What?”

“The date!” She eyes the vase sitting next to her, and then glances at him, raising her eyebrows. “Is it anybody I know?”

“Oh no. I don’t think you would know him,” he says, tone blasé, and Julia’s very carefully groomed eyebrows climb even higher. 

“Try me,” she challenges, and pauses in horror. “It’s not David from the head office, is it?” 

“No! He’s, uh, he’s from the material plane,” he starts, and trails off. “He’s an… adventurer.”

Julia gasps, clutches her imaginary pearls on her chest. “An adventurer! Kravitz, my word!” 

“I know. What was I thinking?” Kravitz rolls his eyes jokingly, and they both giggle like little kids. There’s a quick pause before -

“I can’t believe you’re leaving me to go make out with a guy. The nerve,” Julia says, her smile soft. “Well, your velvet suit is dashing, sir.”

“Your blouse is beautiful as always. I love the little puppies,” Kravitz says, peering closer at the little corgis dancing on Julia’s pale blue blouse.

“Thank you. My husband and I loved dogs, and we never got them,” she says, shoulders drooping slightly. “Have fun, Romeo. Say hello to your adventurer for me.”

“I will, thank you. I will be back before you know it,” he stands up quickly, noting the time. He grabs his scythe, resting on the wall by his desk, and Julia waves goodbye, still sitting on his desk. 

He tears a hole into the material plane, and on the other side, Taako is waiting with a smile that would blind Pan himself, a garden full of roses blooming behind him.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Then, one day, the world is overtaken by a formless oil, too thick and painful to understand, and Kravitz is drowning under it. 

He screams for the Raven Queen, and she doesn’t answer, and it feels like the world has ended. The oil curls around his arms and legs, and he fights like he’s never fought before to free himself from the hands, and the arms, and the crushing feeling of _hunger -_

He frees himself, sopping oil and debris, on the banks of the Eternal Stockade. He feels his skeleton self form and reform, and he can’t make himself stop the process. He notices an arm of that weird, crude oil flying towards him, but he knows more now, he hits it with his scythe and scrambles to his feet, rushing towards to the Stockade. 

Then, somehow, he is alone there, frozen under a motionless storm, the oil from the sea outside clinging to his suit. _Lonely man._ He hopes fervently that the Raven Queen is okay, and Esme and Julia are okay. That Taako is okay. 

The Raven Queen has abandoned him, or she is dead. Both possibilities feel impossible. He lays with his back against the door, eyes trained into the darkness of the Stockade. He can feel himself trembling, and wishes he could stop it. His hands, as always, betray him. He has never felt so useless.

He lets himself cry. He thinks of a plan. He waits, the _thud_ of the ocean pounding against the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't this most plot-heavy fic, sorry. I just like putting in little details about his life, and now that involves a lot of Taako. Also, Taako isn't late because he wasn't late to Chug 'n Squeeze? I was pondering that for a bit. Also, I have to make up a plan to get Kravitz out of his predicament. Also, yes, same Julia. Also, there's one more chapter. Oops.
> 
> Song title is from A Sunday Kind of Love by Etta James.


	3. softly, as in a morning sunrise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kravitz makes a concoction, and Taako is good at his job.

For the first time in his life, Kravitz truly doesn’t know what to do.

Usually he can puzzle things out. He’s smart, always has been. Reaping souls only took a couple days to get right, and, despite his nerves, he knew how dates were supposed to work, but _this._ The world made impossibly dark, the motionless storm clouds overhead. This was something he did not know how to fix.

He stares at the endless abyss of the Eternal Stockade ahead of him, quiet and imposing and incredibly featureless. The Stockade had always been boring on the few times he would visit, brought to interview certain souls for locations of other necromancers. Now, it’s suffocating quiet, and still, and infinitely threatening. 

For the first time in a long time, his fingers itch for his old violin, just for something to fill the noise. Claire de Lune, maybe. 

If he gets through this, he’ll go back and get it. _When_ he survives this. Maybe, _when_ he survives, he’ll even ask Taako if he wants to go out dancing. 

The thuds on the Stockade door behind his back start to turn into thumps, to desperate shoves. It’s getting heavier. 

Well, he won't be able to ask if he dies here. Kravitz stands up, wipes the dirt off his pants, and stalks forward into the endless abyss of darkness in front of him. It swallows him whole, and he keeps moving forward through it. 

He was never one to be afraid of the dark.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

He finds all he needs in the paltry Stockade library to conduct an old fashioned version of the planar-ripping spell. It’s a particularly brutal one, but he is in the epicentre of all the blood, ichor, and bones he could ever need in the Stockade’s reserves, up on the shelves for safe-keeping. He ties his hair back, his dreadlocks brushing his the top of his shoulder blades. He makes quick work of the spell, proceeding to splash dark, arterial blood all over his suit. It spills all over the linoleum counter as well, and he is annoyed at his own clumsiness, trying to coerce most of it back in the bowl with his palm.

He pours the ground bone, blood, deep-earth dirt, and still-steaming liquidized gold in a small ceramic bowl he finds in the Stockade kitchens. He mixes them quickly with his hand, and draws a circle on the ground, making sure the resulting mixture dries perfectly even, mirror-like. He waits, hunched down, taking off his suit jacket and laying it on the ground so he’s just in his dress shirt. 

_Whatever_ is outside is coming for him, banging harder, more insistently, chanting with their horrible voices. _Kravitz. Kravitz. You took us from our families, and we will watch you die._

He watches as the last bit of the mixture dries, just as the front door to the Stockade cracks. He says a quick word, some small cantrip, and lights his jacket on fire. An inferno erupts from his palm, one that doesn’t touch the stone or the steel of the building but the wood chairs, the books around him. He hears the entrance door slam open against the wall, and the fire will melt the portal before it can let them in. He can’t look back. He walks into the portal, and it’s spitting at him, already disintegrating from the pressure. He barrels through, hands over his head into -

The Prime Material Plane. In some sort of base, one with cement walls and low windows. The portal behind him gives a final hiss before disintegrating completely, and he staggers to rest on the wall opposite of him. He breathes, glad for the fresher air of the base, but he doesn’t even know where he is. 

He takes a look outside one of the windows and nearly loses his composure again. Oil covers every square inch of the outside, and his breath fogs the glass as it more comes streaming down from dark clouds above him. 

He slumps against one of those ugly cement walls, and decides that if this oil, this _hunger_ wants to get him, he is theirs for their taking. He’s tired of running. He thanks the Raven Queen for taking him on, even though she cannot hear him.

Just as he thinks that last thought, something large and heavy and warm hits him in the back and slams him to the ground, and for the first time in a long time, he is unconscious. 

He dreams of Esme meeting Taako, and calling him handsome, and Taako laughing at that with his slow, wheezy laugh. He dreams about Julia and Magnus, and Kravitz knows that that’s her adventurer, her Magnus, staring into each other’s eyes, still horribly in love. He dreams of an ending where everything feels sturdy again.

He dreams of that, and then he dreams of nothing.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

“-ravitz? Krav?” 

Pain.

“Please, darling, open your eyes.”

Graceful fingers tracing the line of his jaw. He told Taako he could play piano if he wanted to with those hands, and Taako had scoffed at him, saying he wasn’t talented enough.

“If you can hear me, feel free to make sure I know that fact, Kravitz.”

He was talented enough. Kravitz could ever teach him, if he wanted.

“I swear to Pan, I can’t find your heartbeat because you don’t have one, but I need to know you’re on our side still.”

He screws up his eyes, trying to focus on the voice. Why is this emissary talking to him? Wasn’t he dead?

There are gentle fingers tracing his eyes now, peeling something off of them. Long strands of something. He can crack them open now, and there’s just light.

“H-hello?,” he croaks, hoping the world is kind to him for once.

“Oh, thank Pan,” says the voice tiredly, and suddenly, there’s Taako above him, his face lit by the gold of a sunrise outside one of those low windows. He’s laying with his head in Taako’s lap, and Taako is leaning back against a wall. A familiar wall. 

Oh, he’s in the Bureau of Balance. Yeah. 

Taako’s face is pretty bruised, and bloodied, with various cuts bleeding sluggishly down his face, and he’s more beautiful than he remembered. His hair is down around his shoulders, and Kravitz wants to reach up and curl a strand of it between his fingers. 

“What happened?” Kravitz says instead, his tongue thick in his mouth, and Taako traces the edges of his face with gentle fingertips.

“Me, Mags, and Merle fought a bad person, and we won, and the oil disappeared, and now the sun’s out there shining in my eyes, and we’ve been waiting for you to wake up for, like, forever.”

“I think I slammed into you while running towards the main hall,” a different voice pipes up sheepishly, and he turns his head to see Magnus standing by them, hand scratching his head. He looks about as beat up as Taako is, if not more, with a whole arm bandaged against his chest. “I had to carry you over my shoulders to here.”

“Thank you,” Kravitz says feebly, and Magnus waves his apology away. “How long was I… out?”

“About four hours? Not long,” Magnus says, scratching at a dried spot of blood on his cheek.

“You saved the world in four hours?” Kravitz asks, eyes wide. Taako tosses his hair over his shoulder.

“We’re heroes, darling! Of course we did!” 

“Who was it? Are you okay?” Kravitz starts to struggle to straighten up, but Taako shushes him.

“Slow down, bubbleh, you’ve been out for a while.” Taako says evenly, pointedly not answering his other question, and Kravitz can’t find it in himself to push it. He still struggles to stand, and Taako begrudgingly allows it. Magnus is right at his elbow to help him up too, and he sways on his feet when he stands. He feels drained, which feels very new and also very bad. His left ankle also feels sprained, and his suit is in just as horrible condition as he remembers it.

But, he’s alive. He remembers what he promised himself earlier in a quick epiphany. 

“Once you’re free, you think I could take you out dancing?” Kravitz asks in Taako’s direction, feeling a little dazed, trying to steady himself on one of those ugly cement walls. Taako laughs, high-pitched and cacophonous. 

“I’m not sure about that, handsome, I’ll have to check my schedule,” Taako teases, tone too tired to be serious, and Kravitz moves closer to him because he can and they’re both alive. He wraps his arms around Taako’s waist, and Taako wraps his around his neck, and they sway, a little. Not so much a dance, but just an unwillingness to leave each other’s side. He can hear Magnus cough awkwardly, and he cannot find it in himself to care at all.

“I never learned how to when I was alive,” Kravitz mumbles. Taako nods. He knows. 

“Better late than never, I guess. God knows we have time to do it. We’ll waltz the night away at Killian and Carey’s wedding,” Taako muses, pulling back to rest his hands on Kravitz’s shoulders. He waits while Kravitz blinks a couple times to focus his eyes, and puts both trembling hands on Kravitz’s jaw. Kravitz moves his hands up to cover them. 

“I am… very glad you didn’t die,” Taako says finally, voice shaking slightly, and Kravitz is struck, Cupid-style, and there’s nothing to do but lean in and kiss him, as slow and as sweet as he can. It’s the first one since he died, and it’s a million times better than he remembers it. 

“Same here,” Kravitz stutters when they break apart for air, trying to fill his one cool sentence quota of the century. He can’t even finish it, because Taako turns him and dips him low, and kisses him again, and he’s never felt so warm. 

“My hero,” he mumbles, and Taako laughs against his mouth, and it’s silly, and stupid, and it’s covered in gold.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

He feels the Raven Queen’s presence three days after the apocalypse, and he immediately communes with her, and she’s there. Glorious, and tired. She can only commune for a few moments, but she nods once. She’s there to rebuild. 

He sees Esme among the crowds going back into the new Astral Plane, checking in patiently with a newly hired Jenkins, who was free on good behaviour. She’s wearing a sun hat comically too large for her head, and has a margarita in her hand.

“My dear,” she says, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek when he approaches with his arms wide. "I'm so glad to see you.”

He escorts her to a place he conjures up, a cafe in what once was downtown Phandalin. And he talks until he can’t anymore, and she talks until she can’t. There is something to a dinner between friends after an apocalypse. 

He tells her he loves her, and he cries, because he has what the doctor used to call “full eyes.” She says she’s proud of him, which doesn’t help the crying situation _at all._

Julia, he meets in her new office. She’s been upgraded to higher emissary of the Raven Queen, and has the large, ash wood office with blue accents to show for it. Her office is also right beside his, which he absolutely didn’t pull any strings for.

He walks in and she drops her new dog-shaped paperweight on her desk, and runs to hug him. She’s wearing a pink blouse with little white roses on it, and they do their compliment circle. She asks about his adventurer and Kravitz fake-swoons, but he real swoons as well, because it’s going really well, Julia. 

She nods, and she looks incredibly sad just under the surface. Kravitz leans in and says, quietly, as if the Raven Queen couldn’t hear every word he was saying, he says:

“Anything you want to say to a lovely Mr. Burnsides?”

She whacks his arm, and grabs a pen from her new desk organizer, and writes a note on her stationary. She pushes it into his chest, and thanks him so much the words start to blend together, and Kravitz only wishes he can do more. When he gives it to Magnus later, he reads it and thanks him in the same way his wife did. 

“Consider it a repayment for helping save the world,” Kravitz teases in his silly Cockney accent, and Magnus laughs.

“Fair. That’s fair. Thank you, Kravitz,” Magnus says, smile wide, but he sees something over Kravitz’s shoulder that distracts him. 

“Are you trying to steal my man, Magnus?” a familiar voice calls out, and Kravitz smiles. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Taako brings him to Carey and Killian’s wedding, and he wears his velvet suit with a long, yellow scarf. He cries when Killian and Carey say their vows. He doesn’t let go of Taako’s hand once, and Taako complains about how sweaty it is, but he doesn’t let go either. They waltz until the sun comes up again, and they kiss like they have all the time in the world. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! This has been very fun to write. I very sincerely hope you liked it. Also, I didn't describe the big bad because I don't know who it is. Kravitz lives! 
> 
> The chapter title is from "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise," by Abbey Lincoln.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so. I wanted to do a more in depth character study of Kravitz, because I love him a lot. There's going to be two parts of this, and I'm waiting after the next episode to drop to post the next part, just to get things correct.
> 
> Title is from Sinnerman by (Fantasy) Nina Simone, and the first chapter title is from Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien by Edith Piaf.


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